You need to cut as much meat and bone off as possible. If you don't, I don't care how much borax you use, it will smell and take forever to dry. You don't have to borax the beard. Just trim enough of the meat off of it and it will dry quickly. Your fan should not take a month or longer to dry. If it does, then you didn't properly clean it. I have mounted 30 or so fans and every one of them took about two weeks to dry. I have three fans drying now and two in the freezer that I will mount later. If you want me to take pictures of the process when I mount the other two, I will be glad to do it. I can also show some pics of mounts I have done if you like.